I'm probably over-stating my case, yeah. For example, I can see some room for players to contribute in world-building, where it might actually improve the game rather than detract from it.
I just think you guys do more of both that, and generally arranging things in dramatic ways through various processes than you say/think. Remember, I was, in some dawn age of D&D, an 'advocate' of the same theory. There really wasn't any other theory back then, nor tools to play differently. A lot of it is just built into the original conventions of play, that there's a dungeon, that the PCs are 'special', etc. And the procedures too, all the encounter checks and such. If you actually stop to think about it there's no way that every peasant that walks down the road is having these encounters, the whole human race would be eaten inside a week. Its, even playing the most utterly plot devoid sandbox, already a pre-arranged drama, even if you purely use dice to choose which thing happens at random. I think you just use a very specific terminology and set of concepts to think about it. Particularly at upper levels though, if you play those, the PCs eventually have to become central and drive some sort of plot or the game just falls apart. I think this is just a culture thing, we're not actually very far apart. My game wouldn't shock you or dismay you anywhere near as much as you may think IMHO.
When you place them on the map, you're saying that they'll be there regardless of what the players do. When you roll randomly, you're saying that you don't care whether or not the players encounter these monsters.
Those aren't necessarily in conflict with each other, but they tend to be.
Its the same either way, if the players come to place and time where its been decreed a monster shall be then they meet said monster. Now, if you're going to have 100's of hours of megadungeon exploration the DM probably gets tired of restocking and figuring out where these monsters show up next, so he makes up a random table and throws dice. Even in that environment the process is fraught with issues of logic, if the PCs are in a secret room how do the monsters get in? If they passed some trap or obstacle or other hostile monsters then how did the random wandering monster get there? I assume Gygax applied some sort of judgment on the process.
Those things are not equivalent. Just because we're pointing the camera at this particular group of people, who might be in the right position to do something big and important, it doesn't mean the world is out to get them.
At some point, if the PCs actually do accomplish something important, then opposing NPCs might take action to stop them. Not because the PCs tend to find themselves in improbable situations, but due to real choices that the players have made.
Who says anything about 'out to get them?' that's not at all a necessary component of the equation. They have a dramatic need, and there is serious opposition to satisfying that need, and this creates drama. Once things are set in motion the drama tends to be aimed squarely at the PCs. Its possible they're minor figures in some larger events, at least up to some level or other, but obstacles will keep appearing in their paths, and opportunities will keep appearing likewise, often they're the same thing.
The players made a choice to play the characters. After that they will make many choices that will presumably shape the course of events to come, but they can't choose not to be in the story. They are there, and they are bound to play some significant role in it, assuming they survive.
There's nothing hokey about this either, I don't get why you believe there is. The PCs aren't puppets and the DM isn't a puppet master. That's the whole reason we hate illusionism. If you want some predestined story where the DM just made it up and the players sat around the table never being able to make anything happen or change, then by all means play with that sort of DM, but its like you're painting us all to be that, AND WE ARE NOT! My game is not like that at all. What it IS like is, whenever the players send their characters someplace, whatever they're going to try to accomplish will require them to do interesting things to accomplish it.
If you really lived up to the ideal of the game you espoused where the PCs don't play any special part in the world and just 'do stuff' boring or not it would be VERY BORING! This is why I, and I suspect [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], and probably [MENTION=8900]Tony[/MENTION]Vargas as well all have this real doubt that anything even close to the idea of a 'neutral DM' is happening here.
You didn't earn it, at all, if it was set up for you. The DM has arranged these convenient monsters and bandits and usurpers for you to overcome. That's not to say that it's necessarily easy to overcome them, but that's the reason why they are there.
There is no other reason they would ever be there. The whole game EXISTS so that you can do exactly that. You're just accusing me of playing D&D! I'm guilty as charged! I have NO IDEA how that equates to in your version I somehow 'earned' something and in my version it was 'given to me', that's a crock, to put it bluntly.